


Rocky Beginnings

by Azrael (rcs)



Category: Ragnarok Online
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-08
Updated: 2011-04-08
Packaged: 2017-10-17 18:04:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/179687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rcs/pseuds/Azrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Strange and strangers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rocky Beginnings

The first time Gabe saw him, he sat in a dark hole dug deep into the earth, born by his own two hands. Black hair was soaked around his temples with exertion and sweat, and his gloves were caked in dirt, mud. At his hips were chipped and dulled katars that gleamed with hopeful care, and while they would have made good tools to help with this venture, he seemed not to dare the thought.

She thought he was a hunter laying a trap; she had almost fallen into it, after all, and she wasn’t one to just fall into _anything_. On a whim, her toe kicked a rock down, watching it strike the back of his head and roll away, a nice shot, even if it was unintentional. She waited for the inevitable swarm of arrows and curses.

Nothing came.

Instead, he turned and looked at her, big black eyes that stared with a cloudy disconnect while one of those dirty hands rubbed the forming goose-egg.

“What are you doing down there?” she asked, waiting for a sarcastic answer, waiting for the obvious. _Digging a hole, what do you think?_

That didn’t come either.

“I want to know what they see,” he muttered while stooping down and picking up the offending rock. He even made a point to dust it off, a polite gesture.

 _This ought to be good._ “‘They’ who?”

His glove reached up, offering her the stone as if she had merely dropped a prized possession. A doll. An earring. Her jaw. “The dead.”

  


The second time she had seen him was among the streets, his head down, the ponytail swinging. The katars were in his hands, and while he wasn’t subtle, he was getting most of the villagers to stay away from him. Most. Not her, because he was…interesting. Weird. Quirky.

She followed him for two blocks, easily figuring out his mark: an overweight man dressed in fine furs, shiny trinkets hanging off his belt. Of course. Assassin, out to do a hit and take the money for himself. Shame he wasn’t very good at it, what with the glaringly obvious trail he was leaving behind. People everywhere would recognize his face, his poor weapons that needed to be replaced, the look in his eyes.

“Hey!” she hissed when she drew close enough, her hand on her own weapon in case he drew on her. He didn’t, just kept walking, so she had to attempt it again, a hurried, “Hey! Hole-guy!”

Stopping mid-step, he turned and looked at her with the same distant look, detached and confused. “You are the rock girl,” he murmured, and turned to watch where his mark was going. “Did you misplace it again?”

“Huh?” she asked, then shook it off; sometimes, it was easier to ignore and move on. “You’re being a bit obvious, don’t you think? You’re going to have price on your head by morning.”

His foot –which had been poised in the air during the entire exchange—fell as he started following the portly man once more. “No, I won’t.”

Delusional. He was delusional. No one was that good. “His money can’t be worth that much; it’s all flash. Nothing important.”

He ducked around a corner. “Money?” his voice floated back, honestly confused. As she raced around the edge of the building to find him, he was gone.

 _Nutjob._

  


The third time she found him, he sat in a tree, pressed hard against the trunk. She passed him three times before he called to her, “Rock girl!”, a leaf fluttering down to rest against her lips. Her head tilted up, suspiciously scanning through the leaves to catch sight, and it was only in the shadows did she see the shine of his blades. Subtle, but there.

“Go,” he hissed. “The marked ones are coming.”

A warning she didn’t understand was a warning all the same, and out of trained instinct, her hand went to her weapon as she searched around. There was nothing in the fields other than a couple of travelers, most of them clerics and mages, with a paladin thrown into the mix. There were no arms on their clothing, no sign of a guild, so she turned back up to the tree.

“I don’t see--”

“Of course not. You are not me.”

Her nose wrinkled at that, at the almost humbled arrogance of it. “They aren’t marked with anything.”

He sighed, and it was the first real emotion she heard out of him: tension, worry, frustration. It was a talk he had a hundred times before, and one he knew he would have a hundred times again. “They have the sigil of those that must die.”

She looked back at the travelers (good gear, rare items, high levels, and outnumbering him seven-to-one), then back at him: a confused young man in a tree with dull weapons. Her eyes rolled as she counted her own unlucky days, and grabbed the trunk, shaking it. “They’re going to kill you!”

“They couldn’t.” And this time he looked at her, his eyes narrowed, but he didn’t brandish the blades. “Not me. And not you. You don’t have the sigil either.”

She didn’t know what he was talking about, and she didn’t care. The group of magic users were almost past, and though she felt the weight of their confused looks ( _They must think I’m as crazy as he is._ ), they didn’t stop. “Ever heard of being out-numbered?”

“That doesn’t matter.” He growled as he realized his marks were fleeing, albeit slowly and leisurely. Hopping out of the foliage, he started after them before a hand clamped on his wrist, effectively stopping him.

“Before you run off to your death sentence, can I at least give you a fighting chance?” Was it enough to distract him, she hoped? Somehow, he struck her as the type with a three-second attention span, and she prayed to whatever gods were out there that her intuition was right.

His breath caught in his throat, the caravan forgotten when his eyes turned to her. “You—you want to help me?” he whispered, the surprise sheer and suffocating. He sounded…lonely. “No one has ever offered to before.”

“My guild’s home base that isn’t far from here,” she said, slowly letting go of his wrist and resolving to get a leash later, one for children. “We can get you suited up properly for your, ah, missions.”

A shy smile crawled over his lips, his ponytail swaying as he nodded. “I…I would like that.”

The breath she was holding slid out through clenched teeth, and somewhere, she found her own smile, a little more sturdy, a little more confident. Good. “Come on, follow me.” As an afterthought, she added, “And my name’s not ‘Rock Girl’; it’s Gabe.”

His katars found their place on his belt while he followed after her. “My name is Azrael,” he replied. “And I’m the Angel of Death.”


End file.
